AGENDA #3a(2)

MEMORANDUM

TO:                  Mayor and Town Council

FROM:            Tom Miller, Co-Chair

                        Bharath Iyengar, Co-Chair

                        Million Solar Roofs Initiative

SUBJECT:      Committee Mission and Status

DATE:                        October 23, 2006

Eight members of the twelve-member Million Solar Roofs Committee were appointed in the past year, bringing new ideas and energy to the group.  In the course of reviewing the committee’s charge, members found they would like to expand the committee’s mission beyond its original focus on solar energy.  The consensus of the committee is to broaden our scope to educate and influence the community and its policy makers on sustainable energy and energy efficiency for the built environment. 

This change would be consistent with the relevance of available financial support to our mission.  The federal Million Solar Roofs Initiative was discontinued this year.  Funding for committee activities, such as the annual Solar & Green Homes Tour, is no longer available from our federal or state governments.  Our intention is to continue pursuing our solar goals while aligning our overall mission with the larger national and state-wide push for sustainable energy, as is promoted by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, for example.  

The committee would also like to modify its ad-hoc status to that of a permanent committee.  In light of the Council’s recent adoption of carbon reduction (CRed) goals, this period of transition seems like an appropriate time to formalize our role in promoting sustainable energy and energy efficiency.  We feel that we are ideally suited to serve as a resource for consultation and implementation of the Council’s sustainability goals as they relate to the built environment.

Perhaps this is an appropriate time to establish a dialog with members of the SEE Committee.  We anticipate that you will find some of the overall goals of both committees quite comparable, and there is likely to be mutual benefit in terms of overall knowledge base, goal setting activities, and project completion.

We ask that the Council provide us with direction concerning these requests.

By Consensus:           Tom Miller (Co-Chair), Karen Rasmussen (former Co-Chair), Ralph Taylor, Mark Simon, Bharath Iyengar, Andreas Hay, Tom Wills.